Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Zebras and Giraffes and Quilts, Oh My.

In the next couple of weeks, my dad is going to leave for a trip to Africa. He is meeting my aunt (his sister) and several of my cousins for a short safari in Kenya and then they are going to try to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. This started because one of my cousins is a brilliant medical science person and she is doing an internship in that part of Africa, so over Christmas holidays, several other members of the family decided to join her for a mini vacation. She's already over there, and you can check out her blog to see what she's been up to.

Anyways, my dad is a little over 60, so this trip is a big deal for him, and although he is in excellent shape, the thin air and other challenges on Kilimanjaro will still be a fairly tough climb for him (I'm sure he'll make it just fine). To commemorate the trip, my mom wanted to put together a prayer quilt for him with contributions from those of us in my dad's immediate family. My mom got supplies--lots of fun fabrics and fabric paint pens--and started with my brother and his little girl. They made the first square. After that she came here, and we pretty much finished it up here. My kids each made a square--even Sophie (I covered her hand in fabric paint and made a handprint on her square). I made one for myself and my husband, and then poked my mom until she made hers. She's an amazingly creative person, but she gets quite intimidated when it comes to actually making something. Personally I think she did fine.
Once we had all the squares we arranged them, and I selected a giraffe print, which I thought appropriate given the destination of the trip, to fill in the extra space we had. I put the quilt together, since my mom was convinced she couldn't manage it (like I said easily intimidated especially by crafts she hasn't attempted before--we still love her anyways). I added a zebra print binding, since it fit the theme and it's not like we were trying to match fabrics or anything. =P The point was to send something with my dad that represented a little bit of everyone who contributed. I'm fairly happy with how it came out, and it was a lot of fun to put together. So, this was also where I disappeared to last week. I tend to avoid social network stuff when there is someone visiting.